Prostitutes Were Major Players Settling Wyoming

President Abraham Lincoln’s Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 started the push for railroad tracks from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Towns, temporary towns and mostly work camps sprang up along the way. All these men had money but no access to women, until the “soiled doves” arrived.

As prostitutes, many women made more money than the men they served and populations grew around the brothels and turned the camps into towns with saloons, stores, banks, churches and schools.

“In 1869 William Bright, a saloonkeeper and president of the upper house of the Wyoming Territory, introduced a bill granting all female residents 21 years and older the right to vote. The territorial legislature had already passed progressive measures guaranteeing women teachers the same pay as men and granting married women property rights apart from their husbands.” history.com

By this time, women wielded so much power in the west that Wyoming became the first territory the right to vote. A half century before the rest of the nation did.”

Wyoming refused statehood unless women kept the right to vote and entered the union as The Equality State. Wyoming also elected the first female Governor in 1924..